220 The North Caucasus - The Challenges of Integration I ... Report N220 19 October 2012 THE NORTH CAUCASUS: THE CHALLENGES OF INTEGRATION (I), ETHNICITY AND CONFLICT EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Europe’s deadliest conflicts ...

220 The North Caucasus - The Challenges of Integration I ... Report N220 19 October 2012 THE NORTH CAUCASUS: THE CHALLENGES OF INTEGRATION (I), ETHNICITY AND CONFLICT EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Europe’s deadliest conflicts ...

B. COLONISATION AND INTEGRATION INTO THE RUSSIAN STATE ..................................................... 6C. LEGAL AND SOCIAL CHALLENGES TO CO-EXISTENCE .................................................................. 8

III.THE CHECHEN CONFLICT ......................................................................................... 9A. ETHNIC SEPARATISM AND THE FIRST WAR .................................................................................. 9B. FROM SEPARATISM TO ISLAMISM ............................................................................................... 11C. THE SECOND WAR ..................................................................................................................... 11

THE NORTH CAUCASUS: THE CHALLENGES OF INTEGRATION (I), ETHNICITY AND CONFLICT

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Europes deadliest conflicts are in Russias North Cauca-sus region, and the killing is unlikely to end soon. The state has fought back against attacks, first claimed by Chechen separatists, now the work of jihad-inspired insurgents, that have hit Moscow, other major cities and many Cauca-sus communities. But its security-focused counter-insur-gency strategy is insufficient to address the multiple causes of a conflict fed by ethnic, religious, political and economic grievances that need comprehensive, flexible policy re-sponses. Moscow is increasingly aware of the challenge and is testing new approaches to better integrate a region finally brought into the Russian Empire only in the nine-teenth century and that has historically been a problem for the Russian state. Diversity in religion, ethnicity, historical experience and political allegiances and aspirations com-plicate efforts to alleviate local tensions and integrate it more with the rest of the country. Understanding this pluralism is essential for designing and implementing policies and laws that advance conflict resolution rather than make dif-ferences more irreconcilable.

The challenge of ethnic nationalism has been most evident in Chechnya where two bloody wars caused tens of thou-sands of deaths. During the early 1990s, separatists sought full independence for their republic, but the failure of their state-building project and the ruthless manner in which Moscow fought transformed the nationalist cause into an Islamist one, with a jihadi component. Chechen fighters began to use terrorism widely, and the state responded with massive, indiscriminate force. After 2003, it adopted a policy of Chechenisation, transferring significant political, administrative and security functions to ethnic Chechens. Today the republic has gone through a major reconstruction, and its head, Ramzan Kadyrov, wields virtually unlimited power. Governance and rule of law remain major concerns, but human loss is significantly reduced. The effects of the ongoing insurgency continue to be felt across the North Caucasus, where it has spurred mobilisation around fun-damentalist Islam.

Several inter-ethnic conflicts that developed at the end of the Soviet Union remain unresolved, continuing to fuel tensions. The Ingush-Ossetian conflict led to full-fledged

war in 1992, as both groups asserted claims over the Prigo-rodny district. Though Russia invested large sums to re-turn displaced persons and rehabilitate their communities, the Ingush in Prigorodny remain unintegrated in the rest of North Ossetia. Exclusionary historical narratives and competition over land and decision-making, fuel conflicts in other multi-ethnic republics, especially Dagestan, Kabar-dino-Balkaria and Stavropol Krai. Some of the groups maintain maximalist aspirations, including the change of internal borders and establishment of new ethnically-identified entities.

Inter-ethnic tensions do not presently threaten major vio-lence, but they may grow with the recent revival of national movements that were particularly strong in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Though political parties based on national or religious identity are prohibited, a new law simplifying registration is likely to make it easier for politicians with nationalist agendas to infiltrate small parties. Large in-vestments and a return to regional elections are likely to facilitate ethnic competition and mobilisation if local com-munities feel their rights and interests are not adequately protected by the state. Already groups such as the Nogays, Kumyks, and Lezgins in Dagestan and the Circassians and Cossacks are sharpening their organisational capacity and political demands that tend to focus on rehabilitation and justice, state support for native language and culture, development, greater autonomy and access to land. Ten-sions are beginning to appear where the legal framework is not sufficient to address these, existing laws are not im-plemented, and police and local administrative capacity are perceived as ethnically biased and corrupt.

Many of these disputes and tensions feed into the Islamist insurgency that causes most of todays violence. Parts of the younger generation that twenty years ago would have joined nationalist movements to address their grievances have become disenchanted with those movements and choose to join the Islamist insurgency instead. It increasingly oper-ates across the entire region, attracting youth of all ethnic-ities, and attacking not only federal forces and local police, but also civil servants and elites who disagree with its fun-damentalist interpretation of Islam.

The North Caucasus: The Challenges of Integration (I), Ethnicity and Conflict Crisis Group Europe Report N220, 19 October 2012 Page ii A day rarely goes by without an attack on a Russian secu-rity official or the killing of an alleged insurgent in a coun-ter-terrorist operation. Some 750 people were killed in 2011, and with over 500 hundred deaths in the first eight months of 2012, there appears to be little chance of a let-up in vio-lence that has spread to parts of the North Caucasus that were peaceful only a few years ago. The threat of jihadi groups is not unique to Russia or the North Caucasus, of course, and many governments are looking for effective means to cope with it. Russias counter-terrorism policies have primarily focused on eradicating insurgents through heavy-handed law enforcement measures, but the need for a more comprehensive approach is becoming evident in Moscow and among local leaders.

The North Caucasus is also wracked by corrupt institutions, ineffective governance, poor rule of law and uneven eco-nomic development in a combination that leaves a vacuum some dissatisfied youth seek to fill by joining groups that appear to have resolute aims. The weakness of the institu-tional and economic system further undermines Moscows efforts to implement policies to better integrate the region and combat extremism. These systemic problems will also need to be addressed for any conflict resolution effort to succeed.

This first report of Crisis Groups North Caucasus project outlines the regions ethnic and national groups, their griev-ances and conflicts. The simultaneously published second report analyses the Islamic factor in detail: the growth of fundamentalist Islam (mainly Salafism); radicalisation of parts of the community; the insurgency; and the states counter-insurgency effort, which mainly aims to eradicate extremism via hard-security methods but is beginning to also use softer means, including dialogue with Salafis and rehabilitation of ex-fighters. A subsequent report will elab-orate on the quality of regional governance, the rule of law, the economy and Moscows regional policies and offer policy recommendations for all three parts of the series.

Moscow/Istanbul/Brussels, 19 October 2012

Europe Report N220 19 October 2012

THE NORTH CAUCASUS: THE CHALLENGES OF INTEGRATION (I), ETHNICITY AND CONFLICT

I. INTRODUCTION

Russias North Caucasus region is the scene of Europes deadliest conflicts. In 2011 there were at least 1,378 casu-alties, including 750 deaths, among security forces, civil-ians and insurgents; from January to 1 September 2012, 516 people were killed and 397 wounded. In the years single deadliest incident, a brother-sister pair blew them-selves up in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, on 3 May, killing thirteen and injuring over 100.1 The region has been extremely volatile since the break-up of the Soviet Union two decades ago. Violence was worst in Chechnya, a republic that suffered two all-out wars and where the official counter-terrorist operation ended only in 2009. But conflict has been expanding and deepening across the region, spreading to parts that until recently were relatively peaceful. While the Islamist insurgency is the most visible expression of instability, it feeds on unresolved tensions and disputes between multiple ethnic groups, social prob-

1 2011 1378 [1,378 persons killed and injured during the armed conflict in the North Caucasus in 2011], Caucasian Knot, www.kavkaz-uzel. ru, 12 January 2012. 2012 258 [258 persons killed and injured during the armed conflict in the North Caucasus in the first quarter of 2012], ibid, 12 April 2012. 2012 355 [355 persons killed and injured dur-ing the armed conflict in the North Caucasus in the second quarter of 2012], ibid, 11 July 2012. - 118 [118 persons killed and injured during the armed conflict in the North Caucasus in July], ibid, 4 August 2012. - 182 [In August 182 persons were killed and injured during the armed conflict in the North Caucasus], ibid, 5 September 2012. : - [NAC: the organ-izer of the May terrorist attack in Makhachkala has been killed], RIA Novosti, 16 May 2012. Caucasian Knot is one of several, sometimes conflicting sources of statistics on casualties in the North Caucasus. Crisis Group use its data in this report, since it applies a consistent methodology.

lems and the difficulty the Russian state has historically had to integrate the region.

Even today many living in other parts of the Russian Fed-eration consider the North Caucasus an inner abroad: dif-ferent, destabilising and insufficiently loyal. Many resi-dents of the region feel alienated, due to discrimination and xenophobia. Conflicts, instability and unemployment cause significant migration into the neighbouring Stavro-pol Krai, Krasnodar Krai, and Rostov region (oblast) and Russias big cities, increasing ethnic tensions, nationalist rhetoric and violence. Anti-Caucasian sentiment became prominent in the 2010 Manezhnaya Square riot and the 2011 Russian Duma election campaign. That same year the Russian Academy of Sciences published a finding that 65 per cent of ethnic Russians support granting the right of secession to those peoples who do not want to live peace-fully together.2

Lack of integration is also a problem within the North Cau-casus. A host of ethnic and national groups with their own identities, grievances and aspirations live there. Ethnic differences led to deadly conflict in the early post-Soviet years but now mainly manifest themselves in mass protest rallies, brawls, attacks on individuals, spontaneous takeo-vers of land, political confrontation and exclusionary, threatening rhetoric. Ethnicity is the central building block of local identities, influencing political and social status. Groups such as the Balkars, Chechens, Circassians, In-gush, Kabardins, Karachays, Ossetians, Russians and the peoples of Dagestan are often settled compactly and have a clear concept of their ethnic homeland, a list of historical grievances and current disputes with neighbours that...